Funny how spring goes. One day you’re belly-aching about the horrible weather and wishing you could do more in the garden and then the next day you turn around and the garden has come alive, bringing with it all the good (flowers!) and bad (weeds!) bits. Silly me, I was feeling pretty good after two weekends of garden cleanup. I ...
I have only two indoor plants that I really care about. One is a spider plant I bought at the farmer’s market the day I moved into my freshman year college dorm, making it, well, old enough to be at college itself. The other is a large ficus tree I got from my grandmother’s house after her death. In her ...
A new raised bed is in and the onions are planted. I plan to grow some kale on the other side of it, but most other things will be off limits as this bed is not protected from the overactive deer population in our yard. It feels great to have something in the ground (I did finally get the peas ...
As I mentioned a couple weeks ago, we’ve been waiting for the tree guys to remove a few trees from our yard. I wanted to get rid of them sooner rather than later so I didn’t have to worry about protecting plants near them and we had some more time to figure out what to do to replace them. Many ...
When all else fails, at least there is this: It may be short in stature and damn near buried in an uncleaned garden bed, but the sight of this little hellebore (I don’t know which one it is, unfortunately) did wonders for my soul this week. The weatherman tells us it will actually feel like spring here and I can’t ...
I’ve been spending some time doing lots of research on trees, which is an area I’m less familiar with, because we’re about to lose two very special trees. The tree cutters were supposed to come this week but the weather has kept them away. A March snowstorm took out half of this Cedar leaving it angled precariously close to our ...
We’ve had just about two straight weeks of rain here, but I’m not complaining. For one, we need to fill up Lake Michigan which hit its all-time historical low water mark this winter and for another it could be so much worse. North Dakota got so much snow earlier this week that the federal government gave residents of the state ...
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I received my first shipment from the Yahoo plant buying co-op I’m a member of on Monday. I love it when a box full of plants comes. Because many of the co-ops are sold long before their shipping dates, I often forget what I ordered. It’s like Christmas when I open up those little baby […]
I made my first trip to a nursery for the year this past weekend. I’ve been chomping at the bit to go for awhile, but I’ve sort of been waiting to make it that much sweeter. One of my favorite nurseries had their spring open house during which all perennials are 25 percent off, so […]
I usually spend Sunday nights writing a blog post or two based on things I’ve accomplished over the weekend. This is not one of them because I’m not sure I accomplished anything this weekend. The weather’s been cruddy, which is fine because we really did need the rain, I just wish it would come on […]
Seriously, have you? You should. Oh sure, you’ll feel like a weirdo, and if you do it in a public place you’ll undoubtedly get some funny looks (although that’s part of the fun sometimes). My college roommate, who to this day (many, many days since we lived together) remains my best friend, taught me that […]
Wednesday was a great day in the blogosphere for me. First, I was surprised, honored and a little touched to receive this great award from Rayan over at The Frugal Designer. Rayan is an overachieving blogger. Seriously, I think she’s averaging about three posts a day over there. And she’s not phonin’ it in, either. […]
I’ve talked about beach glass before (some of you may know it as sea glass, but here on the Great Lakes that wouldn’t make much sense). But I don’t think I told you just how competitive my family is about collecting beach glass. We’re ruthless. My dad’s collection is now so big, there’s no way […]
Some of you might remember last year when I was lusting after this compost bin from Lee Valley Tools. After living with a dilapidated compost bin (made in about 25 minutes several years ago with four pallets and a set of hinges) for about a year, what finally made me spring for the new system […]
Garden Bloggers Bloom Day was yesterday and it is getting to be a really fun time of year for the bloom days. Unfortunately up here in zone 5, the things we have blooming are but a distant memory for those south of here. Still, I love that for the next four to five months the […]
If you are ever in southeastern Wisconsin, I highly recommend a stop at the Kohler Design Center in Kohler, Wisconsin. People come from all over to visit this kitchen and bathroom dreamland (located across the street from the Kohler factory), but I’m lucky enough to live about a 25-minute drive away. We’re hoping to add […]
I received a copy of Lee Valley’s gardening catalog the other day (enclosed in a shipment … yay!). I’m not sure why, but I’ve never seen this catalog before (I’ve just been to their Web site), and it is full of all sorts of interesting gardening supplies and gadgets. Some of them are tried and […]
Have you ever noticed that sometimes the things in our homes that bother us the most are the last things we deal with? Or is this some sick personality quirk of mine? It was almost exactly eight years ago that I first laid eyes on what would become our first (and hopefully only) house. After […]
This part of Wisconsin might be considered zone 5 but we have much different weather than many other zone 5 locations. Because I live about 500 feet from the Lake Michigan shoreline, my garden experiences a pretty specific microclimate. The water temperature in the lake is just slightly above 40 degrees right now. That means […]
So I’ve told you about two of the speakers (Stacey Hirvela and Tim Wood) at the Proven Winners Outdoor Living Extravanganza that I attended in Chicago in early March, but of course there was plenty of time spent talking about the newest Proven Winners plants. In fact, they not only talked about some of them, […]
T im Wood knows his hydrangeas. This makes perfect sense given that it’s his job to know all about shrubs and hydrangeas might be the most popular shrub there is. As I mentioned, I went down to the Proven Winners Outdoor Living Extravaganza at the beginning of March. The main focus of the event was […]
